16. CHAPTER XVI: THE HEIR'S SECOND VISIT TO BELTON

Clara began to doubt whether any possible arrangement of the
circumstances of her life could be regarded as fortunate. She was very
fond, in a different degree and after a different fashion, of both
Captain Aylmer and Mr Belton. As regarded both, her position was now
exactly what she herself would have wished. The man that she loved was
betrothed to her, and the other man, whom she loved indeed also as a
brother, was coming to her in that guise with the understanding that
that was to be his position. And yet everything was going wrong! Her
father, though he did not actually say anything against Captain Aylmer,
showed by a hundred little signs, of which he was a skilful master,
that the Aylmer alliance was distasteful to him, and that he thought
himself to be aggrieved in that his daughter would not marry her
cousin; whereas, over at the cottage, there was a still more bitter
feeling against Mr Belton a feeling so bitter, that it almost induced
Clara to wish that her cousin was not coming to them.

But the cousin did come, and was driven up to the door in the gig from
Taunton, just as had been the case on his previous visit. Then,
however, he had come in the full daylight, and the hay-carts had been
about, and all the prettiness and warmth of summer had been there; now
it was mid-winter, and there had been some slight beginnings of snow,
and the wind was moaning about the old tower, and the outside of the
house looked very unpleasant from the hall-door. As it had become dusk
in the afternoon, the old squire had been very careful in his orders as
to preparations for Will's comfort as though Clara would have forgotten
all those things in the preoccupation of her mind, caused by the
constancy of her thoughts towards Will's rival. He even went so far as
to creep across the upstairs landing-place to see that the fire was
lighted in Will's room, this being the first time that he had left his
chamber for many days and bad given special orders as to the food which
was to be prepared for Will's dinner in a very different spirit from
that which bad dictated some former orders when Will was about to make
his first visit, and when his coming had been regarded by the old man
as a heartless, indelicate, and almost hostile proceeding.